Budgeting for research data management

The majority of funders accept data management as a legitimate cost that can and should be accounted for in the project budget. This is subject to the same rules that apply to all research expenditure, namely:

Under Full Economic Costing(FEC) (the methodology that Higher Education Institutions must use to cost their research grant applications), there are a number of possible means that could be used to cover the costs of managing your research data. The Research Office is currently investigating which option will result in the best value for money for the College.

Until the best long-term approach is decided, applicants should ensure that an appropriate amount of money is requested in their consumables budgets to cover research data management (where such costs are permitted by the funder). RDM costs requested should be supported by the Data Management Plan and justification for resources. The UK Data Archive has built a data management costing tool (pdf) that may help in the interim.